


Nothing Was Fine

by lunarlychallenged



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Kinda during and post Infinity War, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), definitely no happy ending, i guess, sorry my dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 09:10:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14638665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: Peter doesn't text Ned after Ned helps him get off the bus unnoticed, but that's okay.  Ned goes to the Parker apartment to wait with May for Peter to come home.





	Nothing Was Fine

Ned was feeling pretty good about himself on the way to Peter’s house. Seriously, he should join the acting club. He totally nailed the whole “it’s a spaceship, we’re going to die, oh no” thing. 

The sidewalks were pretty quiet while he walked. Peter’s place and the spaceship had been on the opposite ends of the city, so while many people were out looking at the destruction, everybody a little farther away had decided to stay indoors in case something else happened. Stores were closed for the day, windows were shut, and even the stray cat on Peter’s block was hiding in a trash can instead of walking to him to beg for scraps.

Ned leaned into the trash can to pet the cat anyway. Peter tried to bring it home once, but May refused to “let any more living things in the house.”

“Hey, boy,” Ned crooned. “You are looking at the hero of New York City.” A little hyperbolic, maybe, but Peter would have been screwed if anybody else knew about his Spidey situation, and Iron Man would have been screwed if Peter hadn’t shown up to help. The cat didn’t have to know that Ned’s part had been minor.

The cat pressed its head into Ned’s palm, a low rumble thrumming through it. “Oh, yes. Maybe I’ll get promoted,” he said. “I’ll be the Robin to his Batman. Who needs a Guy in the Chair when they can have a Guy by their Side? That even rhymes.” 

He resumed his walk to the house, but didn’t stop talking. There was nobody to hear him, and he and Peter had done stranger things around this block.

“Actually, maybe Batman is a bad example. Batman needs Alfred as his Guy in the Chair. He’d be toast without Alfred.”

Ned had a key to the apartment, but when he saw May’s car in the parking lot, he decided to knock instead. The key was “for emergencies,” and though seeing Peter after a spaceship seemed pretty urgent to Ned, May had different standards. For example, she had been pretty steamed about Peter being Spiderman in the first place. Ned thought that Peter’s whole “if I can help people, I have to” thing was kind of noble, but she thought that it was stupid. 

He could still hear the voice Peter used to imitate May. It was a little too high pitched, and a little too nasally, but it got the point across just fine. “If you have to help somebody, you should be making sure that you aren’t in danger, too! You can’t save lives if you lose yours, Peter.”

When May answered the door, she looked frantic. She pulled him in for a hug, a little too tight and a little too short for him to hug her back. “Oh, Ned, thank God. Peter hasn’t been answering his cell phone.”

She looked over his shoulder, brow furrowing when the hallway was empty behind him.

Ned smiled, nervous for the first time. He had assumed that Peter had gone home and fallen asleep instead of texting him. That wasn’t too uncommon; being a superhero could be pretty draining. Ned had slept for a full day after the Homecoming dance, and Peter regularly went to bed early after big fights.

“I thought Peter came home already,” he said.

“I thought that Peter was with you,” she said. Fear made her look older. Her eyes grew, but so did the bags under them. “Peter isn’t stupid, is he?”

“No,” Ned said slowly.

“Not stupid enough to, say, jump onto a spaceship, is he?”

Ned froze. He hadn’t thought about it, but since Ned himself would hate Peter for passing up the chance, Peter had probably done it. “Maybe Peter is a little stupid.”

May stared at him, walked to the table, and downed a mug of coffee. She slammed it down on the table with too much force, and Ned flinched. “If he dies, I’m going to kill him.”

 

They waited together. A part of Ned had hoped that Peter would stumble in, embarrassed after having passed out in some park, but he knew that it wasn’t true. It was all over the news that Tony Stark was missing, and Peter would never let anything happen to Mr. Stark. Iron Man should be able to protect himself, but if he couldn’t, Spiderman would be there.

“Peter is really strong,” Ned said. He was holding a glass of wine. If May had been in her right mind, she would never have given it to him, but certainly wasn’t going to say no. The tartness made him think of cough syrup, or maybe of that unsweetened carbonated water, but it took an edge off of his anxiety that made the waiting almost bearable.

“Sure,” May said wearily.

“Peter is really smart,” he added.

“Sure.”

“He has to come home,” he said.

May took a long drink from her own wine glass. “They don’t always,” she said. 

Ned had forgotten about Ben. His death had been a stroke of bad luck, really. He had been killed during a robbery. Ned didn’t like to imagine May waiting for him to come home, growing increasingly uneasy as she waited with a young Peter. In a way, that’s what Ned supposed the Guy in the Chair did. He waited for the hero to come home, doing everything he could to make that possible. This time, Ned had done everything in his power to make it possible for Peter to leave. If Peter didn’t come home, did that make it Ned’s fault?

“Peter won’t die,” Ned said forcefully. “Peter would never to that to us.”

“Peter can’t control everything.”

Okay. Okay, so Peter couldn’t control everything. But he was hanging out with Iron Man, and Tony Stark could totally control everything, right? He was rich and smart, and he was more of a dad to Peter than anybody else had been. It would be fine. Ned tried to take a deep breath, but there was a tightness in his chest that made it hard to inhale.

May grimaced at him when she saw how rapid his breathing was. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry.” She wrapped her arms around him, rocking back and forth. “It’s alright. I shouldn’t have said any of that. We have no idea what’s going on, but that doesn’t mean that something terrible is happening. It’s all going to be fine.”

Ned squeezed her back, needing the reassuring pressure of her body against his. His mind had been whirring at a million miles an hour on the way over, but now he was pretty sure he crawl faster than he could think. Okay. It was going to be fine, because it had to be fine. It was going to be fine, because May said that it would be. It would all be fine. He squeezed her one more time, planning to pull away before it could get weird, but something gave when he did.

He fell forward a little, not understanding what was happening at first. His hands flew to the couch cushion to catch himself, but recoiled when he landed in a pile of something brown. Was it ash? It kind of looked like kitty litter, which gave him a pause, but then something even stranger sank in. He was leaning against the couch cushion. The cushion where May had been sitting.

A layer of brown something was draped across him, where May had been draped a moment before. He was sitting alone in Peter’s apartment, and nothing was fine.


End file.
